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hope. And he suggests that the most promising way to do so is to draw on

the work of Kant.

But what would it mean to endorse a Kantian account of religious freedom

today, given the criticisms Kant has faced over the last two hundred years?

Ricoeur recognizes that we cannot give a Kantian account of freedom in the

sense of endorsing Kant’s precise conclusions about this topic. These con-

clusions have been found wanting by Kant’s critics, and above all by Hegel.

As Hegel has shown, Kant’sviewoffreedom– not to mention many other

topics – is insufficiently fluid. It tends to see our experience as fragmented

into moments that are opposed and unbridgeable, rather than as continuous

parts of larger processes. Ricoeur cites the following example of this tendency:

I abandon the ethics of duty to the Hegelian critique with no regrets; it would

appear to me, indeed, to have been correctly characterized by Hegel as an abstract

thought, as a thought of understanding. With the Encyclopedia and the Philosophy

of Right, I willingly concede that formal “morality” is simply a segment of a larger

trajectory, that of the realization of freedom. (CI, 413)

Ricoeur goes so far as to say that Hegel’s account of this trajectory is “the

philosophy of the will,” and that “[a]ll the philosophies of the will, from

Aristotle to Kant, are there assumed and subsumed” (CI, 414). But accord-

ing to Ricoeur, it does not follow that a Kantian account of freedom is

impossible. After all, Hegel’s critique of Kant has been subject to critique of

its own, some of it decidedly Kantian in flavor. For contemporary philos-

ophers, Ricoeur claims, “something of Hegel has vanquished something of

Kant; but something of Kant has vanquished something of Hegel, because

we are as radically post-Hegelian as we are post-Kantian” (CI, 412).

The “something of Hegel” that has been vanquished is a hasty desire to

totalize – a wish to mediate that which cannot be mediated. In Ricoeur’s

view, Hegel is too quick to leave behind genuine tensions in experience, and

to submerge inconvenient oppositions into higher unities. For Hegel, as

Ricoeur reads him, nothing can withstand dialectical mediation; even the

most stubborn oppositions can in principle be aufgehoben. “The Hegel I

reject,” Ricoeur says, “is the philosopher of retrospection, the one who not

only accompanies the dialectic of the Spirit but reabsorbs all rationality in

the already happened meaning” (CI, 414).

This Hegel embodies a hubristic

This criticism is strikingly similar to one that Ricoeur would advance many years later in Time and

Narrative. There, Ricoeur accuses Hegel of attempting an “impossible totalization,” of believing that

“the history of the world may be thought of as a completed whole.” See Ricoeur, TN3, 205.In

opposition to this “impossible totalization,” Ricoeur seeks only an “open-ended, incomplete, imper-

fect mediation … with no Aufhebung into a totality where reason in history and its reality would

coincide” (207). An intriguing difference between these two texts is that Time and Narrative seems

What’s in a name? 167

“philosophy of system,” to which Ricoeur prefers “a philosophy of limits”

(CI, 415). Interestingly enough, this philosophy of limits is best embodied

by Kant – not, to be sure, the Kant whom Hegel rightly criticized, but “a

Kant who, in his turn, understands Hegel … [T]his is the Kant of the

dialectic” (CI, 414). Ricoeur’s Kant is the Kant who reins us in when we

presume to know the unconditioned. He is the Kant who offers a critique of

our transcendental illusions, while at the same time reminding us of the

importance of the ideas of God, self and world in regulating experience.

For Ricoeur, then, Hegel’s critique of Kant stands –“[a]nd yet, Kant remains.

What is more, he surpasses Hegel from a certain point of view” (CI, 414). For

this reason, Ricoeur does not hesitate to call himself a Kantian. But he is

adamant that “the Kantianism that I wish to develop now is, paradoxically,

more to be constructed than repeated; it would be something like a post-

Hegelian Kantianism, to borrow an expression from Éric Weil” (CI, 412). A

post-Hegelian Kantian need not accept the letter of Kant’sorHegel’stexts,

but tries“to think them always better by thinking them together – one against

the other, and one by means of the other” (CI, 412).

If we wish to understand Ricoeur’s post-Hegelian Kantianism, “Freedom

in the Light of Hope” is a good place to start. The approach to philosophy

described here is one that is sensitive to the fragmented character of our

experience. Like the “analytical” Kant – that is to say, the Kant of the

analytical parts of the first two critiques – Ricoeur is aware of the opposi-

tions and dualisms that haunt experience: freedom and determinism, duty

and inclination, phenomena and noumena. Like Hegel, however, he rec-

ognizes that we must not be too quick to reify such oppositions. Rather than

taking their poles as static givens, we should try to think them dialectically,

as moments of fluid processes.

At the same time, we must not simply

steamroll over them. Not every tension can be resolved, and not every

opposition can be transcended. It is sometimes necessary to constrain

reflection by treating ideas such as God and world as ideal limits, rather

than as objects we can know speculatively. Ricoeur associates this modesty

with the “dialectical” Kant – that is, the Kant of the transcendental dialectic

more modest in its criticism of Hegel. In “Freedom in the Light of Hope,” Ricoeur speaks as if it is

possible to “reject” Hegel ( CI, 413), or to refute his views by means of argument. In Time and

Narrative, however, Ricoeur scrupulously avoids saying that Hegel can or should be refuted. He says

only that “we have abandoned … Hegel’s work site” (TN3, 205). This abandonment is not the

triumph of an argument, but an “event in thinking” (TN3, 203).

For an extended and very valuable discussion of the ways in which Ricoeur’s work makes use of the

Kantian notion of limit, see Patrick Bourgeois, Philosophy at the Boundary of Reason (Albany: SUNY

Press, 2001).

In the essay “Practical Reason,” Ricoeur puts it like this: “the Kantian moment of the problematic

cannot be eliminated but neither should it be hypostatized” (TA, 197).

168 The synthetic approach: Ricoeur

and the dialectic of pure practical reason, the Kant who offers a “ critique of

absolute objects” (CI, 416). According to “Freedom in the Light of Hope,”

then, Ricoeur’s post-Hegelian Kantianism amounts to a resolution to treat

philosophical problems from three successive standpoints: an openness to

dualisms; a desire to overcome these dualisms by seeking totality; and a

modesty about our ability to do so.

But “Freedom in the Light of Hope” does not tell the whole story. For

one thing, it describes Ricoeur’s approach to just one philosophical topic:

the nature of freedom. But when Ricoeur calls himself a post-Hegelian

Kantian, he clearly intends to say something general about his approach to

many different philosophical problems. As we have seen, he applies this

label to his views on a number of topics, not just his views on freedom. Time

and Narrative, for instance, gives what Ricoeur calls a post-Hegelian

Kantian account of history,

while Oneself as Another gives a similar account

of moral and ethical obligation.

Given the many contexts in which this

label appears, we cannot understand it with the help of “ Freedom in the

Light of Hope” alone. Furthermore, while Ricoeur calls himself a post-

Hegelian Kantian with respect to a number of different topics, there seem to

be a few with which the label is a particularly good fit. Ricoeur seems most

inclined to use this label while discussing the very topics on which Kant and

Hegel disagree most sharply – the nature of freedom and moral obligation,

for example. This is not surprising, given Ricoeur’s claim to be a follower of

the “dialectical” Kant. After all, in the transcendental dialectic, Kant does

not just claim that we tend to seek knowledge of unconditioned totalities

beyond possible experience. He claims that there are three specific ways in

which we do so, and that as a result, there are exactly three ideas of pure

reason.

These are the ideas of God, self, and world, and it is with respect to

these specific ideas that Kant warns us not to seek unachievable totalities. If

See Ricoeur, TN3, 215.

See OAA, Chapters 7, 8, and 9 . Chapter 7 sketches what might be called a Hegelian approach to

ethics, one in which Sittlichkeit is primary and agents formulate life plans in accordance with a

communal sense of what is good. Chapter 8 argues that this Hegelian ethic of Sittlichkeit must be

subordinated to a Kantian ethic of duty – that one’s communally formed virtues and values must

“pass through the sieve” of a Kantian formalism (OAA, 170). Finally, in Chapter 9, Ricoeur shows

how the conflicts to which this formalism inevitably leads can only be addressed through incomplete,

open-ended mediation.

See, for example, the following passage from the first Critique: “[A]ll relation of representations, of

which we can form either a concept or an idea, is then threefold: (1) the relation to a subject; (2) the

relation to the manifold of the object in the field of appearance; (3) the relation to all things in

general … All transcendental ideas can therefore be arranged in three classes, the first containing the

absolute (unconditioned) unity of the thinking subject, the second, the absolute unity of the series of

conditions of appearance, the third the absolute unity of the condition of all objects of thought in general”

(KRV, 323,A334/B391).

What’s in a name? 169

Ricoeur’s post-Hegelian Kantianism were simply a resolution to treat

philosophical problems from three standpoints, then it could be applied

indifferently to any topic. But Ricoeur, far from applying it to just any

topic, usually restricts it to the very topics Kant recommends. An interpre-

tation of Ricoeur’s post-Hegelian Kantianism must reflect this. It must

show that the label is flexible, but that it applies more fruitfully to some

topics than others.

So how do Ricoeur’s readers interpret this label? Some take a deflationary

approach, treating it merely as evidence of Ricoeur’s breadth and his will-

ingness to learn from different traditions. Bernard Dauenhauer, for exam-

ple, seems to understand the label in this way. He writes:

Ricoeur’s way of appropriating Kant and Hegel is typical of his catholic way of

appropriating a large number of important figures in the history of philosophy. He

is the exponent of the “both-and,” and the opp onent of the “either-or.” Thus he

finds instruction not only in both Kant and Hegel but also in both Plato and

Aristotle, Augustine and Benedict de Spinoza, and Karl Marx and Freud.

Dauenhauer is surely right that Ricoeur is an unusually catholic thinker,

and that his willingness to learn from both Kant and Hegel is a good

example of this tendency. But there must be more to his post-Hegelian

Kantianism than this. Many well-known philosophers – Heidegger and

Habermas come to mind – display a willingness to learn from both Kant

and Hegel. But few, if any, claim that this willingness is central to their work

in the way Ricoeur does. Moreover, as Dauenhauer notes, Ricoeur is willing

to learn from quite a few opposed figures in the history of philosophy, to say

nothing of contemporary philosophy. Yet he does not call himself a post-

Aristotelian Platonist or a post-Freudian Marxist. Ricoeur singles out the

term “post-Hegelian Kantian” and gives it a special prominence. That he

does so shows that it means more than a vague willingness to learn from a

wide range of thinkers.

Another reason to reject the deflationary approach is that there is a very

precise sense in which Ricoeur tries to learn from Kant and Hegel. As we

have seen, Ricoeur’s willingness to accept elements of their work does not

lead him to endorse the letter of their views. On the contrary, in “Freedom

in the Light of Hope,” he suggests that learning from Kant and Hegel might

require one to reject the letter of their views. The task, he argues, “is to think

them always better by thinking them together – one against the other, and

one by means of the other … [T]his ‘thinking Kant and Hegel better’

Dauenhauer, Paul Ricoeur: The Promise and Risk of Politics, 3.

170 The synthetic approach: Ricoeur

pertains, in one way or another, to this ‘thinking differently from Kant and

Hegel,’‘something other than Kant or Hegel’” (CI, 12). Ricoeur does not

hesitate to reject large and central parts of their philosophical theories. His

Kantianism and his Hegelianism are more subtle than the conviction that

Kant or Hegel got certain things right. What is at stake in them is the desire

to adopt the spirit or orientation of Kant and Hegel’s work without endors-

ing their precise conclusions. The point is that Ricoeur’s post-Hegelian

Kantianism has much more to do with philosophical pictures than with

theories. Indeed, he sometimes comes close to saying this explicitly. In the

essay “Hope and the Structure of Philosophical Systems,” for example, he

says of Kant and Hegel that “I do not take them as individual systems but

precisely as types” (FS, 208). Thus when Ricoeur says that “something of

Hegel has vanquished something of Kant” (CI, 412), but that “Kant

remains” (CI, 414), he must mean that although Hegel has refuted certain

elements of Kant’s theories, the Kantian picture of the world is still viable.

Ricoeur’s goal is to synthesize the Kantian and Hegelian pictures in a

productive way – to fuse the resources of two general types of thinking in

order to respond to philosophical problems in novel ways.

The deflationary approach, as I have called it, looks unpromising.

Another common strategy among Ricoeur’s readers is to interpret his

post-Hegelian Kantianism in more procedural terms – to identify it with

a certain method or way of doing philosophy. François Dosse, for example,

seems to understand the label in this way. He argues:

The philosophical gesture common to both Éric Weil and Ricoeur consists in

posing antinomies without overcoming them dialectically in a reconciliation of

contraries, as in Hegel. They maintain the tension of the contradiction up to the

point of crisis. This leads not to the overcoming of the terms of the contradiction,

but to their overflow ing, in a shift that allows thought to rebound.

Note that Dosse makes no reference here to which antinomies Ricoeur treats

in this way. He does not suggest that Ricoeur’s dialectical method is best

applied to certain philosophical problems. Dosse presents it as a general

method, one that could be fruitfully applied to topics other than the three

Kantian ideas. David Kaplan interprets Ricoeur’s post-Hegelian Kantianism

in a similarly general way. He also takes it to be an open-ended method that

might be applied to any number of topics.

Kaplan describes this method as

follows:

Dosse, Paul Ricoeur: Les sens d’une vie, 586. The translation is mine.

Kaplan does recognize that there is a close link between Ricoeur’s post-Hegelian Kantianism and his

treatment of the three Kantian ideas. He says, for example, that Ricoeur “retains a Kantian reluctance

What’s in a name? 171

A post-Hegelian Kantian recognizes the importance of the concept of totality but

not to the point where social, political, and religious integration become the

conditions for rational reflection. At this point, it is important to limit the scope

of reflection for the sake of critique. Totality, unity, and absolute mediation are

only limit ideas that, in principle, cannot be attained.

How exactly does a post-Hegelian Kantian limit reflection for the sake of

critique? Kaplan continues:

Evidence of Ricoeur’s post-Hegelian Kantianism appears throughout his career

in each of his philosophical meditations. The third term he creates mediates

without reconciling … Ricoeur’s “third way” recognizes the aporetic quality of

human experience and resp ects the plurality of voices and conflicting interpre-

tation while at the same time affirming the ability of philosophy to find reason.

Instead of resolving an aporia or succumbing to it, he proposes another

option.

So for Kaplan, as for Dosse, being a post-Hegelian Kantian is primarily a

methodological matter. It consists in having a dialectical procedure for

addressing philosophical problems, a procedure that is not restricted to

any particular subject matter.

There is a great deal that seems right in Dosse ’s and Kaplan’s accounts.

Ricoeur’s post-Hegelian Kantianism does involve a specific method. It is

clear from texts such as “Freedom in the Light of Hope” that Ricoeur

does pose antinomies without overcoming them dialectically, and that he

does respond to contradictions by positing a third term that mediates

without reconciling. Ricoeur does approach philosophical problems with

a distinctive dialectical method, and Dosse and Kaplan describe it accu-

rately. Nevertheless, being a post-Hegelian Kantian cannot be just a

methodological matter. As we have seen, Ricoeur does not present his

dialectical method as being neutral with respect to content. He does not

to reconcile the dualism that haunts our understanding of self, nature, and God” (Kaplan, Ricoeur’s

Critical Theory, 12, my emphasis). Still, when Kaplan describes Ricoeur’s dialectical method, he

presents it as a general one that could be applied to any number of topics – not just the Kantian ideas.

Consider Kaplan’s list of the topics to which Ricoeur has applied this method: “Each subject he takes

up – the will, evil, the subject, meaning, narrative, ethics, politics, the law – he finds aporias and

creative, practical responses to them” (13). Clearly, this list contains topics not obviously related to the

three Kantian ideas. In opposition to Kaplan, I argue that Ricoeur does not just happen to apply his

dialectical procedure to the topics of God, self, and world, as well as to a host of others. Ricoeur’s

preoccupation with these ideas is inseparable from that procedure.

Kaplan, Ricoeur’s Critical Theory, 12.

Kaplan, Ricoeur’s Critical Theory, 13.

Another discussion of Ricoeur’s method is Michel Philibert, “The Philosophic Method of Paul

Ricoeur,” in Studies in the Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur, ed. Charles Reagan (Athens: Ohio University

Press, 1979), 133–139. Philibert, however, makes only passing reference to Ricoeur’s post-Hegelian

Kantianism.

172 The synthetic approach: Ricoeur

suggest, as Dosse and Kaplan seem to do, that this method could be

applied to any philosophical problem whatsoever. He is most inclined to

use this method when discussing the three Kantian ideas – God, self, and

world. As I have argued, this is not surprising, given that Ricoeur calls

himself a follower of the dialectical Kant. The dialectical Kant argues that

the three ideas of reason correspond to the three specific ways in which

we are tempted to overstep the bounds of experience. Thus the three

Kantian ideas are the topics most in need of Ricoeur’s incomplete, open-

ended mediation, and it is only natural for Ricoeur to focus his dialectical

method on them.

In addition to all this, we should remember that Ricoeur calls himself a

post-Hegelian Kantian – that is, a Kantian who takes seriously Hegel’s

criticisms of Kant. Without a doubt, the criticism that Hegel directs most

frequently and most passionately at Kant is that he is a formalist whose

theories lack content. He attacks Kant’s ethics, for example, as entirely

abstract. The categorical imperative, Hegel tells us, is an empty testing

procedure that offers no concrete guidance in how to act, because it

has been implausibly separated from all actual practices and institutions.

In short, it seems obvious that a post-Hegelian Kantian would be sensitive

to the charge that Kant’s thought is formalistic and lacking in content.

So it would be strange indeed if Ricoeur’s post-Hegelian Kantianism were

just a methodological affair. True, it leads him to adopt a certain

philosophical method. But this method cannot be entirely content-

neutral.

Ricoeur’s post-Hegelian Kantianism, then, is not just a desire to learn

from two different philosophical traditions. Nor is it just a willingness to use

a distinctive philosophical method, important as this method might be. But

what is it? To answer this question, we must look beyond Ricoeur’s pro-

grammatic statements. Rather than focusing on what he says about his post-

Hegelian Kantianism, we should see what he actually does with the three

Kantian ideas. We should begin with the idea of self, and with Ricoeur’s

most ambitious (though still “exploratory” (OAA, 297)) discussion of self-

hood – the tenth study of Oneself as Another.

The best example of Hegel’s critique of Kantian morality is found in the Phenomenology of Spirit. See

Hegel, Phenomenology, 364–409.

To be fair, Kaplan recognizes this. He says that “Hegel adds content to Kantian reflection, trans-

forming a hermeneutics of the cogito into a hermeneutics of embodied existence” (Ricoeur’s Critical

Theory, 13). But Kaplan does not seem to think that this fact will lead Ricoeur to apply his dialectical

method mainly or exclusively to the Kantian ideas.

What’s in a name? 173

self

A number of Ricoeur’s works deal with the nature of the self. Freedom and

Nature gives a lengthy phenomenological description of the self’sexperienceas

an agent who wills.

And as we have seen, essays such as “Freedom in the

Light of Hope” deal with certain aspects of the self, such as the kind of freedom

it enjoys. But what is Ricoeur’s ontology of selfhood? What kind of thing does

he take the self to be, and how are his views on this matter both post-Hegelian

and Kantian? Obviously, a post-Hegelian Kantian ontology of the self would

reject the “analytical” Kant’sapproachtotheself,andwouldtakeseriously

Hegel’s criticisms of this approach. But it would also find Hegel’salternative

unacceptable, favoring a more modest and less totalizing ontology of selfhood.

So how does the “analytical” Kant approach the ontology of the self? Though

Kant argues that it is impossible to give a metaphysical description of the self –

that there can be no “rational doctrine of the soul” (KRV, 329,A342/B400) –

he has a great deal to say about what such an account would look like if it were

possible.

It would view the self as a substance, and more specifically as a

substance that is “an object of inner sense” (KRV, 329,A342/B400). As an

object of inner and not outer sense, the self would have to be seen as an

immaterial substance (KRV, 331,A345/B403). The rational doctrine of the soul

would also view the self as a simple substance, and therefore as incorruptible

(KRV, 331,A345/B403). Finally, it would assert “the absolute unity of this

subject itself” (KRV, 328,A340/B398) – it would claim that “[a]s regards the

different times in which it exists, it is numerically identical” (KRV, 330,A344/

B402). Of course, Kant does not endorse any of these claims about the self, at

least not from the standp oint of theor etic al re ason. Sinc e the soul is not an

object of possible experience, any attempt to show that it is a simple, numeri-

cally identical substance must be a “pseudo-rational inference” (KRV, 328,

A340/B398). But while Kant does not think that a rational doctrine of the soul

can succeed, he is clear about what form it would have to take. For Kant, an

ontology of selfhood must be an ontology of substance.

It is well known that Hegel rejects this approach to selfhood. He denies

that we should view the self as a simple, immaterial substance. Not

Paul Ricoeur, Freedom and Nature, trans. Erazim Kohak (Evanston: Northwestern University Press,

1966).

Actually, there has been considerable controversy in recent Kant scholarship about whether Kant

should be seen as a non-metaphysical thinker. Karl Ameriks, for example, has argued that Kant should

be seen as offering “modest” or “moderate” metaphysical accounts of self, God, and world, rather than

as refusing to address these topics from the standpoint of theoretical reason. See Karl Ameriks, Kant

and the Fate of Autonomy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

174 The synthetic approach: Ricoeur

coincidentally, he is more optimistic than Kant about the prospects of

developing an ontology of selfhood. For Hegel, the self must be understood

not as a simple or discrete entity, but as essentially relational. It exists not

only in itself, but for itself. In other words, a self exists as a self only in a

certain kind of social context. More specifically, selfhood exists as such only

when it is recognized by other selves.

It requires that one be recognized by

other free, self-conscious beings through a complex web of social relations.

So for Hegel, as John Russon puts it, “truthfully saying ‘I’ is not something

that can be done directly and easily, but is a process that can be fulfilled only

through the support of others; … that is, it is a social act.”

Moreover, the

simple social acts through which we initially seek our sense of selfhood – the

recognition of one individual by another, for example – are typically too full

of contradictions to accomplish what they intend.

True recognition

requires the richer social context offered by institutions such as a state

with a system of morality and laws.

So for Hegel, the self must not be

taken to be a substance, let alone Kant’s simple, immaterial substance. It

exists in, or as, an array of social practices, practices that essentially involve

others and that evolve according to a complex dialectical logic.

It is not surprising that Ricoeur prefers the Hegelian approach to self-

hood to that of the “analytical” Kant. After all, Ricoeur often warns us that

Kant’s thought can be too static, too prone to reify oppositions. When

possible, he prefers to view seemingly opposed terms, such as self and other,

as moments of dynamic processes. Hegel’ s view of selfhood does exactly

that. Where Kant sees a discrete entity, Hegel sees a fluid social process, and

Ricoeur would approve of this dialectical approach to selfhood. But there is

also something in Hegel’s account that would worry Ricoeur. If selfhood

exists in, or as, a series of social acts, then in principle, there is no reason the

acts in question could not be carried out in a perfectly satisfying way. If

selfhood involves the dialectical process of being recognized by others, there

is nothing that rules out the possibility of others recognizing the self in an

entirely adequate way. It is unlikely, of course, that the acts and institutions

that constitute selves could ever function perfectly. But there is no way to

rule it out, and it seems inevitable that as our institutions progress, selfhood

Hegel puts the point this way: “Self-consciousness exists in and for itself when, and by the fact that, it

so exists for another; that is, it exists only in being acknowledged.” See Hegel, Phenomenology, 111.

John Russon, Reading Hegel’s Phenomenology (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), 157.

The most obvious example is the chapter of the Phenomenology entitled “Independence and

Dependence of Self-Consciousness: Lordship and Bondage.” Here, Hegel shows that the process

of recognition essential to selfhood is bound to fail as long as it is taken to involve only individual

persons.

For a more detailed discussion of this point, see Russon, Reading Hegel’s Phenomenology, 158.

Self 175

moves asymptotically towards this ideal. In this respect, Hegel’s view of

selfhood contains a tendency towards totalization that Ricoeur would find

troubling. It leaves open the possibility of the self, under ideal conditions,

becoming an “exalted subject” (OAA, 16 ) – an entirely stable and homoge-

neous entity suffering no fragmentation at all. Hegel’s account might be

preferable to Kant’s, but it risks steamrolling over the tensions and contra-

dictions that Ricoeur considers an ineliminable feature of selfhood.

A post-Hegelian Kantian ontology of selfhood would have to avoid the

pitfalls of both approaches. It would reject Kant’s substance ontology by

viewing the self as essentially relational, and as constituted by a dialectical

encounter with otherness. At the same time, it would deny that this dialectic

could ever be completed once and for all, or that it could ever take place in

an entirely adequate way. In short, a post-Hegelian Kantian would adopt an

ontology that makes the self dependent on otherness without being able to

triumph over otherness. It would understand the self’s integrity as partial

and incomplete – as a limit that must be sought but that can never be fully

achieved. Not surprisingly, this is precisely how Ricoeur understands the

self. One can find glimmers of this view in many different texts from all

stages of Ricoeur’s career.

But it is presented most clearly in the tenth

study of Oneself as Another, and it is to this study that we should now turn.

Ricoeur’s project in Oneself as Another is to develop a “hermeneutics of

the self” (OAA, 16). He presents this approach as an alternative to two views

of selfhood that are clearly unsatisfactory: the “exalted subject” (OAA, 16)of

classical modern philosophers such as Descartes, and the “shattered cogito”

(OAA, 11) of Nietzsche and his followers. Ricoeur seeks a third way between

these extremes. He acknowledges that the self is fragmented and in some

ways opaque to itself, but he does not see it as totally devoid of unity and

intelligibility. His hermeneutical approach to selfhood seeks a compromise

that is “characterized by [an] indirect manner of positing the self” (OAA, 17).

The word “indirect” is meant to suggest that the self’sunityandintelligibility

An obvious example is the theory of narrative identity presented in Volume III of Time and

Narrative. Ricoeur offers this theory as a solution to the following dilemma: “Either we must posit

a subject identical with itself through the diversity of its different states, or, following Hume and

Nietzsche, we must hold that this identical subject is nothing more than a substantialist illusion. ”

According to Ricoeur, this dilemma disappears if we view the self’s identity as an identity accom-

plished by narrative – that is, if we see that “[t]o answer the question ‘Who?’ is to tell the story of a

life” (TN3, 246). A little later in this discussion, Ricoeur describes narrative identity in terms very

similar to the ones I have used in describing Ricoeur’s post-Hegelian Kantian ontology of selfhood.

He says that “narrative identity is not a stable and seamless identity. Just as it is possible to compose

several plots on the subject of the same incidents (which, thus, should not really be called the same

events), so it is always possible to weave different, even opposed, plots about our lives” (TN3, 248).

176 The synthetic approach: Ricoeur